Braised Pork Belly with Coke

This simple dish is one of my favorite dishes.  My brothers and I loved drinking coke when we were young.  My mom liked buying a big bottle of coke for us during festive periods.  Sometimes we could not finish the whole bottle within one to two days.  Then the coke would go flat easily.  My mom liked cooking food with it.  

Last weekend my friends and their children came to visit us and we had a small party.  We enjoyed that evening very much.  We finished most of the food but there was a half-bottle of coke left.  I immediately think of this recipe which just takes about 20 minutes.  It is easy and yummy!

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Serve: 2

Ingredients:

-      200g pork belly (thinly sliced)

-      6g garlic clove (crushed)

-      40g spring onion (chopped)

-      1 slice of ginger (sliced)                  

-      150 ml coke cola                              

-      ½ tsp olive oil

-      1½ tbsp light soy sauce

-      1½ tbsp rice wine or white wine

Method:

1.	Heat a non-stick pan with ¼ tsp olive oil over a medium heat.  Add pork belly and pan-fry both sides of each piece of pork belly until a bit golden brown.  Remove from heat, throw away the oil and set aside.
2.	Heat a non-stick pot with ¼ tsp olive oil over a medium heat.  Add garlic and ginger and stir-fry for one minute.  Toss in pork belly and stir-fry for another one minute.  Pour in coke, add soy sauce and rice wine.  Reduce to a lower heat, cover and simmer for 18-20 minutes until the sauce is reduced to one-third and thickened.  Check every 8-10 minutes to see whether it is too dry.
3.	In the meantime, add spring onion and cook for one minute.
4.	Serve with rice.